Couldn’t agree more, I’ve just written a post on this, thanks for the inspiration.
It is easy to idealise anything and there is a healthy side to strong beliefs. You want something to be better than it is, and so you imagine it and aim for it. This is at the core of creating something better for yourself and the world. Without political, moral, philosophical and technological idealists change would be very slow. There is an unhealthy side too. That of always imagining that in some ideal scenario everything will be perfect. When taken to the extreme of fanaticism it can result in constant unhappiness, the in-ability to be present with what is, and a deep sense of dissatisfaction. The fanaticist is never really happy because the requirements necessary to fulfil them are always an imagined ideal which does not exist. You should be wary of committing fully to anything that ends in ‘ism’ for this very reason. It can quickly become all consuming and block you from a broader perspective. Here’s a list of some common ism’s that you could get caught up in. If you are aware enough of the pitfall of believing too strongly in these then you can retain a healthy mindset of strong convictions held lightly.
Political: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Activism, Nationalism, Imperialism
Philosophical: Humanism, Libertarianism, Idealism, Determinism, Existentialism, Maximalism, Veganism
Religious: Fundamentalism, Monotheism, Polytheism, Paganism, Atheism, Agnosticism
Technological: Transhumanism, Technologism, Posthumanism, Digitalism This list is far from exhaustive. All of these belief and thought systems have various degrees of adherence and some when followed fanatically do not pose a risk to human flourishing. Others, especially the political and religious variations are downright dangerous when approached with single minded zeal. You would do well as an intelligent and curious person to look into these belief systems (if you have not already) as they all offer something of value to consider and reflect upon. Rare indeed is the person who can take elements from these various ism’s; contemplate them, integrate components of them into a wider system of thought, and appreciate their value without becoming fully identified with any one ideology. All of the proponents of the different ism’s will want you to believe that their particular view is the right one, in fact the only one worth considering. This is a mistake, avoid this one pitfall and you can enjoy all of the healthful benefits of strong beliefs without the toxic results of fanatical idealism. It is easy to idealise anything, it’s more challenging and rewarding to hold your strong beliefs with an open mind.
#openmind #polaritythinking #wisdom #life #mindset
Ism’s are dangerous. Avoid them at all costs and retain an open heart and mind.
#wisdom #freedom #mindset
#Bitcoinbull #Bitcoingivesyouwings
#Bitcoin
I asked ChatGPT to tell me about myself. Here’s its reply.
Here’s a bit about you, Adam:
• You’re a 38-year-old married man with four children.
• You value health, wealth, wisdom, happiness, learning, personal growth, and celebration.
• You have been taking a break from your career as a high-end adventure guide in Queenstown, New Zealand, and recently spent six weeks road-tripping across the USA with your family.
• After selling all your belongings and leaving New Zealand, you’re currently in Costa Rica to reset and prepare for new opportunities.
• You’ve been dealing with stress, anger, and frustration, but are beginning to relax.
• You’re considering getting back into personal training when you move to Australia and are funding your trip through Bitcoin investments.
• You’ve recognized that you haven’t been giving yourself enough self-compassion, often driving yourself hard and feeling like you’re failing your wife Francesca and your young children when things don’t go as planned.
You’re focused on improving yourself, managing stress better, and balancing the various aspects of your life.
Thanks you for the encouragement. It’s not easy and the most rewarding things never are. Saw a big salt water croc at the beach last night. That was a surprise!
When you decide to go for a swim with the kids at a beach in rural Costa Rica and the locals advise against swimming with the 4m long saltwater crocodile.
Playa Buena Vista, Nicoya Peninsula
#nature #travel #worldschooling #adventure
Men are becoming physically weak, devolving in a lot of cases. Round shouldered, pot bellied and soft. The most obvious area being poor posture.
Look around at the men slowly returning to ape state, but without the strength and muscularity. Heads jutting forward, shoulders rounding in, buttocks underdeveloped, flat weak handshakes, and flabby faces devoid of a jawline.
Men used to prepare for battle, hunting, protecting their families. Most of this is obsolete for the modern times and so men live vicariously through the battles and victories of actors on the screen, or worse, through pretending to be a hero on a game where the only muscles used are the ones in the thumbs. What a joke.
Modern men sit at computers, eat soft food that requires no chewing, watch porn instead of physically satisfying their partners, and forget to hold themselves erect with pride in their masculinity.
The result is major postural degradation that affects the breathing, nervous system, connective tissue, and confidence. Men don’t realise what it says to other men and women when they display this poor posture.
In order to prevent this devolution physically it requires men to acknowledge that physical posture is an important signal to the world about their sense of pride and capability. Allowing themselves to collapse anteriorly and be pulled down by gravity is obvious weakness. Strength is necessary to stand against the inexorable pull of physical degradation.
Stand up tall, train the back and core, open the chest, breathe deeply and be proud of the physical body. Look at these Costa Rican coffee farmers from the 19th Century, proud and strong men.
There is a lot to be learnt from their posture.
#health #wisdom #masculinity #confidence #posture
Whatever you are doing do it with all of yourself.
Hold nothing back. Be there, be present, and don’t wish to be otherwise.
If you are working work hard.
If you are on holiday relax.
If you are with your family enjoy them.
When you are eating savour each bite.
When you celebrate, don’t hold back.
When you want to be someplace else doing something else instead of being fully present to the moment you miss the meaning of life.
Entire lives are wasted always wanting other than what is and never doing anything fully in the moment.
Whatever you are doing do it with all your heart, mind and body.
This is the key to a full life.
This one speaks to me.
#adventure #travel #freedom
Power outages are common in Costa Rica. Makes me realise how much I take consistent power for granted. Three times it went out last night and things got humid. Was still off when we woke and I wrote this reflection.
When the power is out
Conveniences taken for granted removed
One is faced with oneself
How pleasant the experience depends on how much one enjoys one’s own company
If nothing remains to distract oneself from thoughts, feelings, body and soul
How is the discomfort, big or small
The larger the resistance the more obvious the internal struggle
The quieter the inner sanctuary the more surrender is evident
When distractions can no longer distract and small comforts are taken away
The truth of one’s reality makes itself known
The truth is always there, one experiences it
When the power is out
Life lessons learnt through failure.
- The fool only praises success
- Criticising failure pours water on the flames of growth
- The humble person has failed enough times to know with conviction they can be wrong
- Better to make the same mistake 100 times and learn from it than to make no mistakes and learn nothing
- If you think yourself too clever to make mistakes you will never become wise
- Wisdom celebrates mistakes that lead to success and cautions against success that leads to mistakes
- Failure is welcomed in the youth and scorned in the old
- People who take no risks, make no mistakes, create no enemies and learn nothing new, contribute no value
- The coward is afraid to be wrong
- Better to fail as a lion than succeed as a sheep
- There is no such thing as failing if you refuse to give up
#wisdom #lifelessons #learning #personalgrowth #life
nostr:npub1ycxn4qst07x7yr6fwfe9nxd347ytpnz42n9r37tgrjxk2lsy8nps0nx4rf what do you say to these comments that plants = not food for humans. I feel you’ll have something to share.
I’m a spiritual hedonist, found between the flesh and spirit. A theistic Pagan, who believes in God and nature. A lover of masculine awareness and feminine pleasure. I resonate with the God of the Bible, the wisdom of the Mystics, the teachings of Christ, and the wild passion of the ancient goddesses. Learning to live with the Paradox, the balancing act of holding a polarity mindset that accepts them both is my great life challenge. Raised as the oldest son of conservative Christian evangelicals, fundamentalism was a part of my life from my earliest memories. It probably didn’t help that as the first child of my devout parents I was born on Christmas Day. I was a wilful child. My nature is curious, experimental and rebellious. I like to try everything and ideally on my own terms. Needless to say my parents took this as a direct challenge and determined themselves to bring me into line with good old fashioned discipline and religious instruction. It failed. I could be controlled but only for a time. Eventually all the strictness would cause me to lash out and react in a way that triggered and upset my Mum. As a law abiding, socially upright and moralistic christian the things I said and did caused my mother great anguish. Intellectually I understood God. I believed in Him and in His son Jesus Christ, in my head and my heart. I didn’t seriously question the doctrine until my late 20s. It was just that the desires were so strong I would always cave in, then ask for repentance after the fact. I would have made a good Catholic. I’m a terrible protestant. One great example of this was my nightly reading. I would start with an adventure or fantasy novel, move to a porn magazine, masturbate, feel guilty about it and finish with the Bible. There was a lot of guilt… I think God was very much in the background for me, despite being immersed in Church and religious teachings, right through to my mid 20s. I really hit a hedonism peak at University around age 19 and I went at it like a Rock star. Needless to say there are some great stories and also some rather awful mistakes made during the ages of 18 - 22, but I don’t regret any of it and I also met my incredible wife Francesca smack bang in the middle of the debauchery. Needless to say she has the patience of a saint. Sometime after University and living in Bondi Beach Sydney I felt again the spiritual call and began yearning for something deeper. I was fit and healthy, having fun, but feeling empty and a had a rather constant addiction to pornography, that has had some sort of a hold on me most of my life, I just love sex. I felt empty on a deeper level and Francesca was feeling the same. It was at age 24, shortly before heading off on a year long travel adventure through Latin America that God came crashing into my life in a most tangible way. Without taking up the next 500 words explaining it in detail all I will say for now is, God suddenly communicated with me in a very real way in very real words and with intensely powerful energy. I had my awakening experience. I felt God and Jesus and overwhelming love and support. I felt freedom, joy and a sense of purpose. I promptly decided to commit to being a better Christian and took all my enthusiasm and pre-programmed fundamentalism and threw it at faith. It worked quite well for about 4 years. I saw miracles, spoke in tongues, preached in church and lead Bible studies. Sure I still partied, cut loose from time to time and struggled with all the usual desires but I also felt spiritually connected and in communion with God in a way I never had before. It was real to me. Somewhere along the line I started to see the cracks in my reasoning and the narrowness of the doctrine I was espousing. It wasn’t the God I had experienced but rather a theology I had been indoctrinated with I was falling into. I needed to let it go, eternal judgement and punishment did not work for me, and I felt the need to embrace a spirituality that was more accepting of natural human desire and the feminine. With the birth of my first child, it all cracked away and I began to question everything again.
From here life lead me to Eastern Mysticism, The Desert Fathers, Yoga, Sufism, Zen, OSHO, and Paganism. None of these teachers or teachings were something I wanted to fully adopt but I learnt something from them all and most of all from OSHO. He literally rooted the fundamentalism of my parents out of me and free’d my mind to explore outside the box. Meditation has been powerful for finding God within myself and for allowing me to be still when the mind wrestles with everything. God is there, I have no doubt, but Gods nature is still mysterious and I value the intellectual honesty of an agnostic. To say I don’t know is a powerfully humbling place to be. I’ve learnt to see Jesus with more honesty and less idolatry, without all the layers we’ve caked on top of the man who showed us God with such clarity. I’ve also learnt to tune into the energies than the theistic religions have suppressed for Millenia like the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who later morphed into Aphrodite. She is the goddess of sexual love, fertility, abundance and war. A true weapon of a being who was much too powerful for the priesthood to accept. She has helped me to accept my hedonistic side and is the balance to Christ for me. Now I find myself seeking the fine line, the time to feel into it, and the acceptance that I cannot pick one religion or dogma. It’s just too narrow for me, I have to have an expanded mind and heart that will not capture my joy with guilt or bind my mind with judgemental superiority. I seek to live in the Paradox, learn through experience and to help others find their own unique spiritual journey. I have not found anything fresh on the well trodden path. Only old ruts worn deep by the mental grooves of all who have followed before. I consciously plunge off the trail into the unknown of my inner existence and I seek the balance between fleshly desires and the spiritual aspirations for inner peace and contentment. Have I found it? Not yet, but there are glimpses of the light, and I am most excited about the journey.
In theory this may make sense. Empirically it does not. Analysis of human behaviour over time clearly shows the ability of humans to thrive on both plant and animal foods and I can personally attest to the incredible transformations I have witnessed in the health of hundreds of people over the last 20 years who have improved their health and vitality through adding more plant foods into their diet. Humans can eat all sorts of things and always have.
Great question received on IG. Let's dive into #DAIRY 👇👇
The avocado part is easy. The human gut pH is VERY acidic, i.e. it's not built to digest plants of any shape or form. Plants = not food for humans, period.
Dairy is a more controversial, because it IS an animal product; however it does come with trade-offs.
I think Zac nails it here 👇
Milk's (and therefore dairy's) role in nature is to load babies with tons of nutrients very quickly, since they need to grow extremely fast. It achieves this by containing addictive substances (including galactose, a form of sugar), which make the infant slightly addicted to it by design.
Once the infant grows big enough to chew and digest meat, they stop drinking milk, and meat becomes the new optimal food. (No animal in nature drinks milk as an adult; there's a reason for that)
Now let's look at human adults:
Dairy's addictive properties, and it's natural role of being a growth agent, don't change just because you're consuming it at an older age. This is why it's so hard to just have one tiny piece of cheese, or 1/3 glass of milk. And it WILL make you gain weight if you consume it consistently.
I've experimented with this myself when I've visited my hometown in WA, since it's a farm town and there's unlimited raw milk/cheese everywhere.
Yes it tastes amazing. But I absolutely develop a little bit of a stomach pouch when I add that on top of my usual steak/salt/water strict diet. Gas increases too - a clear negative signal from your gut.
CONCLUSION:
Is dairy optimal?
For infants, yes. as they need to gain weight fast.
For adults, no...UNLESS your goal is to gain weight. There are stories out there of people with anorexia getting into raw milk, and finding excellent healing benefits, so I don't want to discount those stories.
But if you're trying to stay at peak trim physique or lose weight, definitely avoid it. Lion Diet is king peak for that.
Hope that helps! Here's a link to a bunch more resources on dairy if you want to dive deeper, feat. nostr:nprofile1qqstzt0wugc7sklvr8e7fcl7ukyn63ym3ns4nmf2mnk0vqnz4l9x65qpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqguwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxumm5d4skuerpw3hhy7fwdaexwqgawaehxw309ahx7um5wghx66tyv3kxjmn89ekhjerwwvhx5uq9ezhgl and several other no-BS carni docs 👇
https://whycarnivore.com/#Dairy
#carnivore #carnivorediet #keto #ketodiet #rawmilk #rawdairy #diet #health #animalbased #weightloss
Plants = not foods for humans 😂
Thanks,
It’s amazing to write that down. I was inspired by others replies to share and in writing it I realised how much of an impactful experience going from school to home school and back to school was. It has really shaped me…
My eldest daughter is 10, loves video games, was skateboarding earlier today and is into Bitcoin. This sounds perfect for her.
How do we access your book?
